Powers That Be

by Anne McCaffrey

  His tone was rich in irony and his tenor young and surprisingly vibrant, though Yana suspected he had never sung before an audience either.

  “But I saw the caverns and the water and the carving of wind and water

  I saw the gleaming snow, like jeweled cloth.

  I saw the branches waving, the water talking,

  The ice answering, the snow laughing. I saw

  The animals of water and earth and they were talking, too.

  They were kind to me and answered all my questions

  But I do not know what questions I asked.

  I do not know what answers I heard.

  I know the cavern, the branches, the talking water,

  The speaking ice and the laughing snow. I know

  That you know it, too. So hear my song

  And believe me. For I have seen what you have seen.

  And I am changed. Hear my song. Believe me.”

  He threw his head back as his last passionate note died away, and threw out his arms, entreating their response.

  It began as a very low murmur of approval, growing as more folk entered the answering chorus, as more people began to drum their feet on the floor, as a crescendo of sound beat on Yana’s ears until she almost put her hands over them. But if she had, she would not have heard the answer.

  “We believe! We believe! We believe!”

  She had jumped up and was shouting along with everyone else. Because she could not doubt the boy. Everyone, at the same instant, swarmed across the floor toward him. Bunny was on the platform, hugging him, and suddenly he was crying, with the same sense of relief that Yana knew she had just felt.

  Singing the Inuit way had much to recommend it.

  Yana was still caught up in the emotion surrounding Diego’s song when a voice spoke in her ear. “Now that was very moving.”

  The voice belonged to Torkel Fiske, who prevented her from turning with a light touch on her shoulders. Sean was no longer beside her. “Very touching. I’m so glad I convinced Giancarlo to let the boy come here today. Obviously he needed to vent his emotions and I do find it curious that when he insists here, in his poetic mode, that the nonsense his father has been babbling was real, the villagers agree with him.”

  “Maybe,” Yana replied in a sardonic tone, “that’s because the villagers are more observant than the company.”

  “Oh, but the villagers are the company, too. Perhaps a branch that’s had insufficient attention in the past.”

  “Ooh, that sounds ominous,” she said as lightly as she could.

  “Maybe a little prophetic,” he admitted, breathing into her hair. “I hope nobody will mind that I came. I just had to see for myself about this party you and Diego were so excited about. Could I talk you into a dance, or are you able?”

  “I seem to be managing,” she said, looking around for Sean. “And there’s no dance music playing,” she pointed out, feeling ridiculous, standing there in her homemade blouse, uniform pants and stocking feet like something out of a gothic novel. “Look, Torkel,” she said, shaking off his hands to turn in his arms. “You’ve been a godsend and I’m very glad to see you, and I’m flattered by your interest. Under ordinary circumstances I’d be very tempted, but, well . . .”

  “Oho!” he said, his eyes smiling down at her while his mouth twisted with mock disappointment. “I’m not the only one to appreciate you, huh? I was hoping the locals would be too backward to notice. My estimation of this place increases by the minute.”

  Thank God his ego was strong enough that she didn’t have to worry about losing his friendship—and his assistance—by declining to play. She kissed his cheek. “Asshole.”

  He prolonged the contact with a hug that ended with sagged shoulders. “Oh well, so much for the reasons I was looking forward to coming.”

  About that time Aisling approached them and held out her arms for a hug, too, giving Yana a graceful way to extricate herself from Torkel. “Yana, I just had to tell you how beautiful your song was, how much it meant to me and everybody else.”

  “Thanks, Aisling. And thanks again for making this gorgeous blouse.”

  Aisling flushed with pleasure. “That’s okay. It looks beautiful.” She glanced at Torkel inquisitively and with just a tad of something Yana took to be—well, not hostility, but suspicion.

  “This is an old shipmate of mine, Aisling, Captain Torkel Fiske. He arranged for me to get the material and for Diego to be here today.”

  “Oh, that was real nice of you, Captain,” Aisling said, sticking out a long-fingered hand for him to shake. Torkel, typically, raised it to his lips instead.

  “Hey, Yana.” Sinead appeared behind her partner and stuck her hand out to Torkel, too. “Tell this guy for me that Aisling and I share everything,” she said.

  Again, the tone was friendly but the undercurrents were guarded and, in this case, more markedly hostile—but not because Torkel was kissing Aisling’s hand. Yana thought perhaps Sinead might be being possessive of her on Sean’s behalf.

  “Torkel, Sinead Shongili.”

  The two regarded each other like fencers assessing each other’s strengths; then he kissed Sinead’s hand, after which she surprised him by kissing his, then licking her lips.

  “Um, hairy knuckles. My dad had hairy knuckles.”

  “I like her,” Torkel said, turning to Yana and pointing to Sinead.

  “Me, too,” Aisling said, putting her arm around Sinead’s shoulders.

  “Listen,” Torkel said confidingly, taking in not only Yana but Aisling and Sinead, “maybe you women can help me with something I’ve got to do which is going to be real hard. Maybe you’d even know if I ought to do it now or wait until this party is over.”

  “Sure, Torkel,” Aisling said.

  “What’s the matter, man?” Sinead asked.

  “I need to find out who is next of kin to a woman named Lavelle Maloney.”

  “Lavelle!” Sinead said. “Has something happened to her? Where is she?”

  Torkel gritted his teeth and patted the open air with his hand in a calming gesture. “I really think I should tell the next of kin before I tell anybody else, don’t you? But, well, I think they’ll need your support when I’ve finished talking to them.”

  “Oh, no . . .” Aisling said.

  Sinead touched her partner’s forearm gently. “Why don’t you go tell Clodagh and Sean they’re needed and I’ll take Torkel and Yana to get Liam.” To Torkel she said, “Lavelle’s husband has been sick a long time. He didn’t come today. We’ll get her boy Liam to come with us back to her house to tell his da. Her daughter lives at Tanana Bay, and her other son is in the Space Corps, stationed on Mukerjee Three.”

  Yana saw Sean then, one arm around Bunny and the other around Diego, herding the kids toward her, speaking earnestly to Diego. Close behind him came Clodagh, and Sinead stopped as she met them.

  Clodagh held up her hand and twiddled her fingers impatiently, as if staving off Sinead’s news. Then she, too, headed toward Yana and Torkel.

  She knows, Yana thought as Clodagh sailed toward them like a liner through an asteroid belt. She already knows. But how?

  Torkel was intercepting Sean and the kids. “Diego, son, you have great talent,” he said.

  Torkel looked so handsome and fatherly congratulating Diego, Yana thought. He had wisely chosen not to wear a uniform, despite the apparently official nature of his visit. He wore instead a heavy sweater patterned with moss green, rust, and cream that set off his hair and eyes to good advantage, and a pair of rust-colored woolen trousers. He was bigger than Sean, she saw, and more stockily built, and of course their coloring was very different; one russet, the other silver, like fire and ice. Except, she remembered with an inward blush, there had been nothing icy about Sean Shongili thus far in their acquaintance.

  “Sean,” Sinead was saying, “this man is here because something has happened to Lavelle.”

  Sean squeezed his eyes shut and his lips thinned with pain, bu
t that was nothing compared to Diego’s reaction.

  “What? What’s happened to her?” the boy demanded of Torkel, his eyes blazing and his fists clenched. “What did you dorks do to her?”

  Torkel looked genuinely pained. “Nothing, son. We’re not sure what happened, and won’t know until we get the autopsy report.”

  Sean’s head snapped up. “Autopsy?”

  “I take it she is dead then?” Sinead drawled with a contemptuous roll of her eyes.

  Torkel blew a deep and frustrated sigh. “Please. Let’s tell the relatives first.”

  “Sinead,” Clodagh said softly, and the woman plunged into the crowd.

  Diego, who at first had seemed moderately pleased to see Torkel, suddenly blew a gasket. “Goddamn you guys, you killed her!” he cried. Sean had hold of him, which was a good thing, because Diego was lunging for the captain and spitting with anger. “You guys just kept after her and kept after her and wouldn’t believe her or us or anybody. So you fraggin’ tortured her to death or something! Damn you. Why couldn’t you let her alone? Why can’t you let us all alone? You don’t know the truth when you hear it. She told you what happened. Dad and I told you what happened, and you beat her up because you didn’t believe her and she died.”

  “No, son, I—”

  “If you didn’t have my dad there, I’d never go back to that place. Never! Let us go. You’re too dumb to—”

  Clodagh was interrupting him with soothing noises, but she didn’t really know the boy.

  Neither did Yana, but she knew the reaction. The boy had simply had one too many profound traumas in a short space of time. His singing had been a highly emotional probing for him, opening a deep wound for healing. Before the healing could take place, Torkel’s revelation had assaulted him with a new pain on top of the other.

  “Metaxos, listen to me,” she said in a calm but very firm voice. “We can find out the truth. There’ll be a report. They’ll return her body. I’ll go back with you to SpaceBase personally and find out what happened if I have to go retrieve Lavelle myself.”

  Diego jerked his head to turn his searing glare on her. “You’re one of them. How can I trust you?”

  “Oh, Diego, come on,” Bunny said.

  Just then Sinead arrived with a stony-faced young man in tow. “Captain Fiske, this is Liam Maloney, Lavelle’s son.”

  “My mum’s dead, isn’t she?” Liam asked Torkel. In contrast to Diego, Liam seemed outwardly very calm. Almost as if he’d been expecting this, Yana thought.

  “Well, yes. I wanted to tell you and your father together.”

  “No offense, Captain, but I don’t think Dad wants to see any of you people right now. I’ll tell him.” He turned to Clodagh, who put her arm around him as if he were still a baby, and as they moved away, he buried his head against her massive breast.

  “Okay, Captain, now that you’ve done your duty, I think the rest of us need to know what’s going on,” Sean said.

  “Come on back to my place,” Yana said quickly, including Sean, Bunny, Diego, Sinead, and Aisling in her invitation and finally, with a sympathetic glance at Torkel, adding, “I’ll make us some real coffee.”

  10

  “How did she die?” Sean asked.

  “We can’t be sure yet. The autopsy report wasn’t in when I left SpaceBase,” Torkel said. “Probably delayed effects of exposure. Acted like respiratory failure, apparently. The medic suspected she may have frostbitten her lungs while she was out there and nobody realized it until she had already been transferred via shuttle to headquarters. The old man isn’t doing so hot either, although the girl, Brit, doesn’t seem to be suffering any ill effects. They’re to be transferred to Andromeda medical facility for further observation.”

  “Don’t,” Sean said. “Send them back here. Keep them at SpaceBase if you have to, but they will soon sicken and die if you send them off-planet. They’re adapted to this planet and these conditions. They’ll die elsewhere. Bring them back.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that,” Torkel said, just a hint of belligerence creeping into his voice. He didn’t say it, but Yana could feel the resentment building in him: here he was trying to be such a great guy and let the locals in on what was happening, and they tried to tell him how to do his job.

  “Why not?” Diego demanded angrily. “Are you having too much fun questioning them?”

  Torkel heaved an exasperated sigh. “Son, I’m trying to be patient with you because I understand how upset you must be about your father. Your dad’s partner is on the way down to look after you and should be arriving on one of the first troop shuttles. But I’ve had about enough crap out of you. You’ve been raised by Intergal. Surely you know that we don’t use rough stuff on our own people . . .”

  He appealed to Yana, but she said nothing. The terrorists from Bremer had been interrogated. They had, at one time, been Intergal’s own people.

  Sinead said diplomatically, “It’s just that we’re a very close-knit community here, Captain Fiske. People will worry about Sigdhu and Brit even more now with what’s happened to Lavelle. I’m not saying it was the company’s fault, but you know, we’re used to a different kind of atmosphere here than what you have on the stations and ships. Our air is fresh, even if it’s cold, not endlessly reprocessed.”

  “Glad you enjoy it,” Torkel said with an ironic lift of his eyebrow. “The company provided all of the amenities of this planet.”

  “We need our own back here on the surface, man,” Sean said, and Yana realized that he was at a disadvantage not knowing who Torkel was. “My family has been accommodating the species of this planet to its peculiarities for four generations now and between you and me, the company hasn’t provided a lot of what’s here. There are major adaptation problems for our people . . .”

  “And you are, sir?” Torkel asked politely, but with an edge in his voice to match the one in Sean’s. They stood across the room from each other, each with his feet spread and his arms poised, like a pair of gunfighters squaring off.

  The cat, which had been lounging on the middle of the table washing its underside, suddenly leapt up, sprang to the door, and meowed urgently to go out. Yana crossed between the men to open the door, and when she turned back, they had relaxed so that they were merely glaring at each other, but no longer posturing. She stepped quickly between them, gesturing to each to come closer.

  “Captain Torkel Fiske, descendant of the terraforming Fiskes, this is Sean Shongili, descendant of the genetic-engineering Shongilis,” she said quickly, as if officiating at a hailing party for newly recruited officers. “You guys want to go to opposite corners and come out flashing credentials?”

  They didn’t seem to hear her for a moment; then Torkel suddenly grinned fondly at her and reached out to squeeze her shoulder.

  “Trust you to try to defuse a situation, Yana. God, I’ve missed you. Shongili, I am actually extremely pleased to meet you. Excuse me if I came on a little strong, but we were all shocked by that poor woman’s death when she had been so instrumental in saving young Diego here and his father.”

  “I think I can help, Torkel,” Yana intervened again. “Let me see that autopsy report when it comes in. And please, I think there’s been enough evidence gathered so far to show that Petaybee is not exactly what the company ordered, and Sean may be right about the adaptive failures.”

  Torkel shook his head. “That doesn’t make much sense, Yana, when half the existing Intergal force was recruited from Petaybeans originally.”

  Yana shrugged and held out a cup of coffee, wishing she had acquired more cups from the BX. He took the cup in one hand, then took her hand in his other.

  “The recruits are young, Captain,” Sean said. “Their growing isn’t over, nor full maturation reached when they leave Petaybee to join Intergal.”

  “That’s as may be, Shongili. Yana, we’ll talk about this later. I can see now that everybody’s too upset to listen to reason.”

  “I can take you and Dieg
o back, sir,” Bunny volunteered. Yana noticed that her young friend had very wisely kept her mouth shut throughout the conversation, retaining an enviably neutral—at least as far as Torkel was concerned—stance.

  “Thanks, young lady, but I brought my own,” Torkel said. He turned to Diego as if to say something, but Diego’s black scowl made him think better of it.

  They were pulling on winter gear when there was a knock at the door. Yana opened it, and there was the cat, sitting squarely in the middle of the doorstep, and Clodagh, in only a light jacket, stocking cap, and knitted scarf, right behind.

  “I’m glad I caught you, Captain, Diego,” she said, with a slightly softer look at the boy. “Adak just got a message in and brought it to the latchkay looking for you. Dr. Margolies is at SpaceBase now.”

  Torkel nodded his thanks and started to turn to Diego, but Clodagh stopped him.

  “Captain, I was thinking maybe, you know, if your doctors think Dr. Metaxos won’t get any better, maybe he and Diego could come here to live with us? Dr. Margolies, too, if the company wanted to station him here. Maybe he could do the work you need better if he lived with us?”

  Yana wondered what Clodagh was thinking of. She knew the villagers had responded well to Diego at the latchkay, but in many close-knit communities, Dr. Metaxos would have been held indirectly responsible for Lavelle’s death. Maybe these people were just unusually generous, but she couldn’t imagine they would welcome a known company agent on the premises. On the other hand, theoretically Sean was a company man, too.

  Torkel looked as flummoxed as she was by Clodagh’s offer and said with his customary charm, “That’s very kind of you people, and I’ll certainly suggest it to Dr. Margolies and to Colonel Giancarlo. It might indeed be convenient to have Dr. Margolies based here in Kilcoole, at least for the time being, and good for young Diego to be around people his own age again. At least until the company comes up with some permanent solution for his problem.”

  Clodagh shrugged. “It’s no problem to us, Captain. You might not realize it, but what happened to Dr. Metaxos has happened to quite a lot of people on Petaybee. This planet can be kinda hard on certain folks.”